Once upon a time, lawyers were trusted advisors not paper pushers.
There was a time when attorneys were seen as trusted advisors, providing clients with advice and guidance in their personal and business lives. Unfortunately, that noble tradition has given way to the mega-firm and the billable hour. Red Hill Law Group is a boutique firm founded upon the goal of restoring the attorney to the role of trusted advisor.
Here’s the problem: Personal computers make it possible for attorneys to create documents quickly and easily using "cut and paste" word processing. This change has affected estate planning perhaps more than any other area of the law. Prior to personal computers, every will or trust had to be typed from scratch. It took time, and so it only made sense for attorneys to give plenty of thought to what the documents should say.
Today, the focus has shifted from good advice to good documents. Attorneys can create workable, but generic, documents and simply change basic information for each client. In this "trust mill" approach, attorneys simply gather basic information from a client then hand it off to a paralegal who cuts and pastes the information into the "cookie cutter" trust. The result? Millions of people now have living trusts. However, the incidence of trust litigation and malpractice has skyrocketed.
